Many operating systems on one computer...

I would like to run many operating systems on one computer with a relative little budget; so i cannot affort to buy a lot of harddrives, or new computers, i know that it is not possible to have more than four partitions on a system, but i have seen examples using more than that. Is it possible to have a partition with partitions in it

The 4 partion limit you speak of is only for PRIMARY partions, rather then Partions of the type LOGICAL, I suggest you google for information on partions and bootsecters, LBA adressing, and Large Drive Support - these are basic topics, however they will you a good foundation in understanding for the project you speak.

All Dos based windows systems have to have one primary partion unless your using a boot loader, and due to partion info no more then 4 primary partions can be used for any os without currupting the drive.. or at least thats what all the docs I have read have said; (not counting extended primary of course)I had to do a much of looking for info when i once had slack, winho98se with phat linux, debian, and was playing with a atheos and such.. Although thats not a large amount, I had a friend who loved playing with different os's who had several more, and he always confrimed that primary partion limit.. go into your nix prompt and look at the lilo docs as well as the docs for cfdisk and fdisk under linux, it should be there.. and if Im wrong let me know.

You may have one extended partition (which may have as many logical partitions as you'd like) and three primary partitions or four primary partitions and no extended partitions. One primary partition may be marked as bootable. A logical partition can not be booted from directly but a boot manager may be able to boot it.